Whether you work from home or not, it can be hard to have productive mornings. Unless you’re really a morning person, it’s likely you spend your first 15 minutes feeling sleepy and unmotivated. Once you’ve had a cup of coffee you may be able to think better, but that still doesn’t mean you’ll feel like doing anything! If you want to have a productive start to your day (and likely a productive day overall), you have to start your mornings right! Check out these 5 Tips to Help You Have a Productive Morning!

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5 Tips to Help You Have a Productive Morning

1. Stretch

If you want to have a productive morning, then you need to start your day with stretching! Stretching helps to get blood flowing throughout your body, reducing any grogginess or muscle stiffness. It’s also helpful because it requires you to get up and move around, forcing you to get out of your bed or chair. The more limber and active you feel, the less you’ll want to keep sitting around, and the more you’ll want to get on with your day!

2. Have a Good Breakfast

Next, make sure you start the day with a good breakfast! A good breakfast is not a sugary cereal that’ll give you a sugar high and then a sugar crash. A good breakfast is full of protein, fiber, and nutrients. It should both energize you and keep you full until lunchtime. Eat a good breakfast and your body will have plenty of energy to help you do whatever physical or mental tasks you have planned for the morning!

3. Make and/or Check Your To-do List

An easy way to waste a morning is by spending time on unimportant tasks. To have a productive morning, you should be following a to-do list! In the morning, set aside 5 minutes to sit down and plan out your to-dos for the day. Write them all down. Then re-write them, organizing them so the important ones are first. That way, if you don’t get to everything on your list, it’ll be okay because you took care of everything really important early on. If you already have your to-do list done and ready for you when you wake up, then take 5 minutes in the morning to review it.

4. Do Your Most Difficult Task First

When you make your to-do list, set it up so that you do the most difficult or unappealing, though important, task first. If you get all your hard to-dos finished early, the rest of the day should be smooth sailing! On top of that, the relief and happiness you’ll feel from having finished all of your hard tasks already will empower you to continue being productive all day long!

5. Stay Away from Email

One of the best ways to have a productive morning is to stay away from your email! It’s so easy to get distracted by email. Between responding to friends, checking out product sales, and reading forum responses, a “quick” email check can easily turn into a lost hour or two! At best it can lead you toward completing some of your more unimportant tasks. If you want to really get things done in the morning, try to not check your email until you’re really awake and feeling productive. Then you’ll be more likely to keep your email check short!

Are your mornings productive?